STORIES

Caroline Hau
The story entitled Stories was
written by a Filipino-Chinese
author/writer, Caroline Hau.
She was known for her works
on Filipino culture and
literature.
 The story “Stories” was about the family
history of the main character who traces
her family’s migration story from China to
the Philippines.
 The story was then narrated on FIRST
PERSON Point-of-view. The main
character narrates the story by using
rhetorical strategy of description to convey
the literary language of the plot.
STOP for a while!!
What is
rhetorical
strategy?
 Rhetorical Strategy
The rhetorical strategy is often
employed in writing that is meant to
persuade or writing that attempts to
make a strong point.
 This means that the narrator uses
words and descriptions in the story that
was used to persuade the readers in
believing and understanding the literal
meaning of the plot.
 With this, it makes the story succinct in
depicting the comparative poverty the
family has experienced in China and in
the Philippines.
 STOP for a while!!
What is succinct?
Succinct – expressing in
few words
 The story began when the main
character narrates how his father took
care on his garden. The main character
cited the ways on how the father planted,
took care on plants, for example – “For
fertilizer, he took the snake trail that
wound through the peanut fields”
 The main character started narrating
with the present happenings on the
father after the hungry years, long before
he left the Tang Mountains, and joined
his family in Hong Kong, long after he
settled down in the Philippines.
 So, in general, the settings of the story
started in the Philippines. The other
settings was in Hong Kong where his
family are and the other one was in Tang
Mountains where he experienced the
hungry years.
 It was then followed by the main
character narrating how she knew the
past stories of the father. The father
himself instead of raising potted
sunflower (that he could not raise),
instead he made memories with his
children with his stories.
 The father also has a peculiar way on
telling his stories. He uses pronouns that
are either he means it or he mean the
other way around.
 Let us focus on how the father
tell his stories on his children for
it follows the plot in the story.
 The father grew up without knowing
his own father. It is because his father
(the narrator’s grandfather) was in the
Philippines, managing a flour business.
The absence of his father was then
considered for him as their hungry years.
 It was their hungry years because his
father has no means on sending them
money for the Japanese blockade cut
offed their communication.
 Without the presence of men in their
households, his grandmother (the
narrator’s great-grandmother) was the
one who ruled over everything on the
house. One of those was them eating
sweet potatoes for their meals.
 Also, one of their jobs or work in that
time was making salt and the father
described that it was how low China has
fallen in that time. They have to steal their
own salt.
 “We had to steal our own salt”. Meaning
there were something about that because
he used the word to steal and followed by
their own. Do you have to steal your own
belongings?
 Then, his father (narrator’s grandfather)
went home in 1946. It was the time after
the war. His father brought things with
him from that war, everything that was
useful and useless.
 After his father’s homecoming, the
hungry years ground to a hail. But he could
not shake off the habit of poverty. He was
used to eat sweet potatoes and does not
want to eat rice. As cited, “ my
grandmother would take out a bowl of rice
and exchange it for the sweet potato””
 The father also during that time has
Pa-ak – capability, without the confident
brevity and implicit pride. He hated
school and sat through hours of
Confucius.
 The father has a lot of memories in
school. For example, the schoolmaster
teach him a lesson by painting a black
circle around his mouth for every curse
word he uttered.
 That was the story of the father from
the past. As continued in the story, it was
backed again in the present times. The
father loved his father (narrator’s
grandfather) so much that he kept all the
memories (like stuffs) of his father.
 That was the story of the father from
the past. As continued in the story, it was
backed again in the present times. The
father loved his father (narrator’s
grandfather) so much that he kept all the
memories (like stuffs) of his father.
 The main character wants to be a
writer, but his father would tell him that
“What will you write if you have not
lived enough – hiding yourself in the
house as you do?”
 The story ended as his father told them
to bring them back in China to show
them where his past memories happened.
And the main character want this also to
not lost his father in sepia and shadows
in head.
 “to not lost his father in sepia and
shadows in head”. It means that the main
character wants to give color on the
stories he/she have heard from his
father.
 In the end, the literary use of language
of “Stories” is Hau’s imaginative ability to
present the conjunctures or connections
between the far past of the family in
China and the present life of the main
character as Chinese Filipino.
THANK YOU.
GROUP 1